


Nightmares

by chaya



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-13
Updated: 2012-08-13
Packaged: 2017-11-12 02:20:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/485611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chaya/pseuds/chaya
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>PTSD symptoms make 100% sense if you're a companion.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Rose is a terribly brave girl, and even the Doctor has to admit it now and again. The occasional 'for a human, anyway' tacked on the end doesn't keep Rose from noticing it is a real compliment. Time and space travel isn't for everyone, especially not a 21st-century Earth girl. Rose has got guts. Rose has made it this far, and that is really saying something.  
  
But Rose is not exactly a rock.  
  
Sleeping on the TARDIS has its own perks and oddities... but the slight rocking and the thrums are actually nice for her, reminding her of passing trains and the washing machine just three doors away that likes to rumble through the night, reminding her of back h- of mum's flat. Rose gets to sleep alright, but she'll wake up sometimes in the night with the Doctor standing over her pool of blankets and pillows and it's the same conversation every time.  
  
"What're you doing here?"  
  
"I tend to _drop by_ when I hear you screaming, Rose. Call it a developed habit."  
  
It's not the first time she's gotten nightmares. When Roses's mum first told her how her father died, she'd dreamt of cars and a crushing feeling in her guts for a few weeks. She felt fine in the morning, totally ace, but after her head hit the pillow all the fears came fizzing up to the surface.  
  
Tires screeching. Did he fall, or was he thrown back? Did his stomach hurt like this?  
  
Rose sends the Doctor away each time and lists the times she's gotten nightmares over nothing. Her father, an aunt getting sick, a bad experience at a summer camp. That one time she was nearly in a car wreck. Rose figures that if the Doctor thinks these terrors aren't much out of the ordinary for her, he won't feel compelled to just send her back where she'll hopefully stop freaking out.  
  
Rose does alright during the day. They pick up a boy she rather fancies, real smart, and of course he gets dumped off as almost as fast as they picked him up not days later. Honestly, who sneaks off to get a snap-operated opening to their brain? Who? People who've been living underground the American continent for too long, that's who.  
  
Things go back to normal. Normal meaning she travels in a police box with an alien in a leather jacket who has a sonic screwdriver and they go through time kind of normal. They visit h- they visit London some more and Mickey's trying, he really is, but this is a whole new kind of long-distance relationship that neither of them are really ready to handle. Puppy love is tenuous enough when they can visit every day. Dropping by every couple days, or months, or whatevers... are they even seeing each other anymore?  
  
The nightmares aren't so bad. Rose wakes up crying now, but she doesn't actually feel bad. She's shaking like a leaf, but as she keeps telling the Doctor, it's really fine, because she doesn't _feel_ scared or even sick. She used to go to the doctor - a proper doctor, she says, and just because they're happening every night now doesn't mean that they're necessarily harmful, let alone can they be fixed somehow.  
  
And it's better that she's having her silly freakouts here than out there with all the dangers, yeah?  
  
The Doctor doesn't bring it up during the day, or ever for that matter, and things go on normally. Normally means following space junk and running smack into the second World War, complete with an American bisexual conman from the 51st century. He seems to fancy the both of them, and for the first night or two Rose suspects that they're actually sharing a room somewhere up that never-ending staircase.  
  
When Rose wakes up to the feeling of flesh and flannel, she knows something is definitely different. She's sobbing into someone's shoulder - so thin and familiar-smelling, must be the Doctor - and there's a sillouette in the doorway of the American in loose pajama bottoms.  
  
"What's wrong with her?"  
  
"She's fine, now shunt off."  
  
"What do you mean she's fine? She's crying. You ran downstairs and found her-"  
  
"I said shunt off." The Doctor presses his lips to the crown of her head, gathers her into his lap and she just shivers.  
  
The sillouette mutters and hesitates and then disappears from the doorway. Rose curls up tighter into herself but extends one trembling hand to touch the Doctor's cheek.  
  
"I. I'm really alright."  
  
"I know."  
  
He stays with her and doesn't ask anything. Rose calms down and distracts herself with viewing his pajama choice this particular night - orange and violet tartan. She starts to hiccup and rub her nose with the back of her wrist, and that's how he knows she's going to fall asleep soon.  
  
"You don't need to worry or anything. I'm fine."  
  
"I know."  
  
More days pass. Aliens, explosions, running, sonic screwdrivers, the usual. Rose feels that she's getting so used to it all, consciously, that it's absolutely ridiculous to keep freaking out every damn night. To keep screaming every night. She must be making a racket, because by the time she wakes up now she's in his arms every time. Rail-thin but wicked strong arms, drawing her to his chest and keeping her there where it's safe. Hunter green pajama set this time. Striped blue ones the next night. It's another routine that they can both fall into. Just another constant throughout the universe.  
  
They don't ever talk about it, though, because that would be weird.


	2. Chapter 2

Rose hadn't ever gone to the Doctor's room before. She hadn't even seen it. She hadn't even been entirely sure that he had one. Aliens, you know? It's never a good idea to assume anything.  
  
But now she's standing in it. It happens to be a very spartan sort of bedroom, with a bed only the size of hers and some simple furniture filling the corners. For all the places in the universe he's surely been, the Doctor does seem to end up with very Earthen decor.  
  
The Doctor in question is looking at her with an unusual amount of... well, shock.  
  
"I waited."  
  
Rose swallows and says it again. "I did. I waited." She's tugged her lavender-and-white duvet up over her shoulders, it's long enough to pool at her feet and then some, but she still feels so cold. She shifts on her bare feet but doesn't move from just inside the doorway. The Doctor blinks, sits up straighter, and slides off the bed to approach her. He looks just as nervous as she does, which is another sure sign that things are obviously not the same anymore.  
  
"I did hear you," he tells her in a low voice. "I did. I always h-"  
  
"But you just stayed up here!?" Rose stamps and throws the blanket down. "You just heard me tonight like you hear me every night but you figured you'd just stay up here this time and- and- and not go down and-"  
  
The Doctor starts to reach out to take her by the shoulder, and that's how Rose knows she's definitely crying again. She opens her mouth to cut him off at whatever he's going to say, but her throat's closing up and all she can do is hiccup at him. That's less expressive than she really wanted. The Doctor drops his hand and then stuffs it into his pajama pocket. Canary yellow with vertical mauve stripes.  
  
"I wasn't sure if you'd want me to come," he admits finally.  
  
Rose can't think about that. "What were you so busy with, anyway?"  
  
"Nothing. I wasn't doing a thing."  
  
"Not even sleeping?"  
  
"I can't sleep when you're like this."  
  
She's losing her momentum again. He always did that. Does this. "But you can't be arsed to come down."  
  
"It's not that, Rose." He notices that she can't quite look him in the eye, and crouches down to get in her line of vision. "You're still... I mean, I can understand why you've been feeling the way you have been, and-"  
  
"The nightmares don't scare me, alright!? I told you."  
  
"But you do want me with you."  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"For the nightmares that don't scare you."  
  
"You always used to come."  
  
"Things are different." A beat. "Well, they actually really aren't, but you feel that they are, which makes things different."  
  
Rose has a really difficult time arguing with that, so she bites her lower lip and toes the corner of her duvet. It's looking lavender and dejected on the hardwood floor. "I'm. It's not so bad."  
  
"You accused me of being Slitheen."  
  
"I feel much more comfortable now."  
  
"Crying is comfortable?"  
  
"I'm comfortable with _you_ , okay? I'm comfortable enough with you that I still want you to come down to my room every night, I'm comfortable enough that I still selfishly expect you too, I'm comf- comfortable enough that I can come in here and yell at you for not comforting me. Alright? Okay? All the little things I knew you by are gone, totally gone, your nose and your ears and the way your shoulders rolled back and hid in your jacket that you don't wear anymore, you were taller, I'm pretty sure you smelled a little different, and it's all been very hard on me to see you sort of explode and then look like a completely different bloke. Okay? But I think I'm mostly over it, so don't assume that you frighten me or something. Don't think you know what's going on in my head."  
  
"..."  
  
"Well?" Rose looks him right in the eye, and now it's the Doctor that can't quite help finding something else to focus on.  
  
"Clearly I have no idea what's going on in your head, so it's a fair statement." The Doctor coughs into the back of his other hand and then stuffs that one into a pajama pocket as well. His hair looks rumpled and ridiculous as ever. That never happened before.  
  
"Obviously."  
  
He lowers his voice. "I did _want_ to go to you." And the way he says it sort of floors Rose, which gives him the opportunity to move on very quickly as if nothing were amiss at all, ever, anywhere, in any way shape or form. "So you absolutely must check out the back of my hand. I have a freckle just over the lowermost knuckle of my forefinger and my ring finger. They're so disturbingly precise. It's ungodly. Look."  
  
The Doctor is sticking his hand out for observation like a young boy might thrust a frog in a jar right in your face so that you can see how truly wicked it is. Rose indulges him and takes his hand by the pinky and thumb, splaying the fingers out and looking at the knuckles.  
  
"That is very unusual," she agrees. "Maybe it means something in palm-reading or whatever. Long creases mean long life, crosses mean... trouble, I think... maybe the freckles are your spotty history to come."  
  
"Ha, ha." He pulls his hand back as if she is no longer worthy of seeing it - the repartee is back.  
  
( _"I didn't smile."_ )  
  
"No, I mean it. Maybe in some alien-otherworldly-palm-reading thing, it indicates dodginess, or a penchant for tea and the word 'jimjams'."  
  
He pretends to consider it. "Maybe in one of the third-cortex regions..."  
  
"And moles between shoulderblades."  
  
"I happen to be very proud of it." To prove this statement, the Doctor pushes his shoulders back and rubs them together. It's not until he begins to smile in obviously-fabricated glee that Rose can't help from laughing.  
  
"Now I want to _see_ it," she admits aloud. Not even thinking.  
  
This earns her a raised eyebrow, but she keeps a game face and is rewarded with the unsnapping of buttons.  
  
"You must inform me," he informs her as he turns around, "if it is the hairy kind." He shucks the pajama shirt off and Rose knows that he isn't doing it to be sexy, but standing here in his bedroom and watching him partially undress is really a little bit kind of hot. He was great before, and she's starting to warm up to this new version.  
  
"Eww, gross. S'not." Rose steps over her duvet, leaning in and prodding the spot experimentally. "It's just like a really big dark freckle." She giggles, and when he laughs in return she can feel it through his back, beneath her hand.  
  
"No birthmarks?"  
  
She checks. "Can't see any."  
  
"Rashes?"  
  
"Only the festering purple one on your bum."  
  
"Like you could see if there was."  
  
"These jimjam pants of yours sling lower now, Doctor. Remember you've gotten thinner and all."  
  
"Ah yes, my new girlish figure." He turns back around again, laying his palms on his hips like they aren't as scrawny as the rest of him. "Soon I'll be trying on training bras, makeup, getting funny looks from the boys in the schoolyard."  
  
"I recall one boy that rather fancied you before all that."  
  
The Doctor grins lopsidedly, and they don't talk about it.  
  
"Doctor." Rose looks away from the trail below his navel, but it's starting to require forced concentration. _His - eyes - are - up - there._  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Do we have to wait until we're about to die again?"  
  
His grin disappears into nothing, and is quickly replaced with a look fo concern. "I'm sorry?"  
  
"Do robots or aliens or warships or whatever have to be raining impending doom down on us for you to.. to.."  
  
"To what?"  
  
"To _say it_ , even?"  
  
"It?"  
  
This is going nowhere, and Rose realises that it never will unless he wants it to, which means he obviously doesn't want it to, which means there's no point. "Forget it. G'night." She crouches down and picks up her dejected blanket. "Sorry for yelling at you earlier."  
  
"No worries." He pads after her a few steps as she walks into the hall, wrapping the duvet back around her shoulders. Behind her is the soft little sound of cotton blend dragging against the floor. "Will you be alright on your own, Rose?"  
  
"I s'pose. Thanks. Night." She's seven steps on when she hears the door close behind her.  
  
It can't hurt to go back and listen. The TARDIS only creaks on the outside. He won't hear her.  
  
Using up the last of her guts for the night, she sneaks back over and presses her ear to the door. Silence. What had she been expecting? For him to be on the phone? For him to be talking to himself?  
  
Was that keyhole there before just now?  
  
Rose's view is narrow, fuzzy, and keyhole-shaped, but she can just make out the foot of his bed and the floor in front of his dresser. He is picking up his pajama shirt from off the floor, slipping it back on one arm at a time, and buttoning it back up. She can't see his face once she straightens, only the jut of a hipbone and working fingers as he re-dresses himself.  
  
The cold sigh she hears could be the engine. It probably is.


End file.
